Currently ranked No. 12 in the world by FIFA, England qualifies as the Top 20 opponent U.S. Soccer president Sunil Gulati stated the U.S. team was in talks to play prior to its friendly against Spain. The United States will face Spain on June 4 at a site in Europe yet to be determined.

At a press conference prior to Wednesday night’s match against Mexico, Gulati said there was a 50/50 chance, at best, of the friendly before the Spain match happening. Gulati would not reveal the potential opponent, saying only that it was a Top 20 team.

If England and the United States do meet it will mark their first meeting since England posted a 2-1 victory at Soldier Field in Chicago on May 28, 2005.

For those keeping track, this could mean the United States is lining up a trio of games including England, Spain and Argentina (Yes, Argentina appears to be the front-runner for the proposed game in the United States around June 8th in the Northeast United States) before its first World Cup qualifier in June. That isn’t quite as imposing as Morrocco, Venezuela and Latvia but still pretty impressive (yes, i’m kidding).

What do you think of this development? Does that list of games leave you extremely excited? Share your thoughts below.

“jaded, you say Bradley couldn’t lead Brazil past the 2nd round of the WC, then you say he only succeeded at Chicago because of his players.”

Obviously if a team is good enough to succeed without a manager or with a terrible manager, the manager won’t matter.
I thought this would be obvious, but I meant if the help of a good coach was required to advance even great teams like Brazil or Italy to the second round, Bradley would not be up to the task.

“And you criticize the inclusion of Corrales and Moor, at the same time that you praise Bradley as a talent scout.”

This is really silly. Coaching your team and scouting talent are two different things. That’s why they are usually different jobs. Picking a bad lineup is a poor managing. He is not scouting. Those players are already well established. Good scouting is finding unproven talent and having a good success rate of those players developing into good players.

“Or maybe every team should just be Chelsea 2006/7.”

I’m assuming you mean every lineup should be the best possible players that we have?

Again, pretty silly. Experimenting and assessing a talent pool is one thing, never ending experiment with excessive time spent looking at players who are clearly not ready is a waste of valuable time that is limited given how many times you are going to be able to test your final team or near final team against good opposition before playing in the world cup. At this rate, by the time he has a near final team ready for the world cup he will be stuck testing it against teams like Morocco, Venezuela, and Latvia because no one else will be available right before the world cup.

Then there is this claim about Bob Bradley’s bravery in facing tough opposition. I’m not so sure about that. How brave is it to test out a team that no one will really expect that much from in the first place? Yeah, he really was brave to test his team against tough opposition in the Copa America, wasn’t he? No, he wastes a good opportunity and has the excuse of “I was just experimenting” to explain being clobbered. Players who currently cannot cut it for their MLS team do not need to be called to the national team until they can improve their play for their club team. (With the possible exception being players who already have a proven track record with the national team.) A good example would be Pat Noonan. I like Pat Noonan but he has not played well for a while, probably because of injury. Eddie Lewis is past his time. I know we’re desperate for someone to cross the ball, but he isn’t going to get back to his old form at this point. There is just no possible reason for calling up certain players at this point. Two years may seem like a long time, but it’s really not in terms of assembling a team for the world cup. We’re going to go from casual call up anyone who wants to play mode, to we have to hurry because there’s very little time left mode real quick.

I wonder if everyone would be so patient with BB if he was “arrogant” and “obnoxious”.

Wow…this is really great news. Every time I start to go south on Bradley, something like this happens and I remember why he’s such an improvement over Bruce Arena. A good showing in this game would not only up the stock of the USMNT, but it could also help the chances of MNT players looking for summer transfers, which could include Dempsey, Altidore, and Bradley. (If Watford stays down, Demerit might be in that group as well, but I’d think he’d want to captain Watford in the EPL the following season. He stated in his latest ESPN blog that the recent lack of MNT inclusion has been due to injury, which made me far more relieved and willing to forgive Bradley, and this summer schedule is another step in that direction. I’m very excited.) As for England being completely overrated, I guess that’s probably somewhat true, but to suggest they’re nothing is a little ridiculous. Gerrard, Barry, Rooney, Terry, Ferdinand, Joe Cole, these players are all probably better than anyone the US has, although the gap isn’t as big as the English media would like to believe. That said, England would kill for any one of the USA’s top four GK’s, not to mention a forward prospect like Altidore, so the buildup to the match will be almost as interesting as the match itself.

I’m glad we may be playing three top ranked teams in the near future. I certainly hope BB will realize that he cannot experiment with inferior players for those games and use that as an excuse for losing all three games. I wouldn’t be critical at all of three losses if we used our best team.

On a different note. I understand that because we didn’t reach the second round of the last world cup while playing in the tournament’s toughest group and enduring nightmare officiating, that the best coach the U.S. has ever had is now the equivalent of George Bush in popularity, but is it too much to ask to at least stop all the lies?

How good is BB that you have to keep making up lies about Arena to make him look good? The constant nonsense about how the U.S. played only “minnows” under Arena is ridiculous. It’s so “cool” to bash Arena that everyone joins in and they have no clue what they are talking about, they just copy everyone else so they can be agreed with. Sad.

This would be an epic matchup and hopefully a nice payday for US soccer! After the way England has been playing maybe they’ll be yelling “The Yanks are coming, the yanks are coming!”. I would pretty much do anything to be at this match…

this is sweet..i think if we bring our A team top to bottom we have a better than good chance to beat england( NO MORALLES OR THAT OTHER GUY WHO DOESNT deserve another game with the usa). we could also have a positive result vs ARG

Ives- you seem to insinuate that the USA-Spain game was not going to be held in Spain. The reports I have read seemed to insinuate it would be Spain’s final home match before the Euros. Do you have any additional info? I’m going to be in Spain in early June and I’m making it a priority to get to that match.

This is a good development because if we generate results, it should help our rankings. Should we qualify for the WC, it should help us get a seeding in the draw. While we beat Mexico and do well against them, we need to play these level of teams to surpass Mexico in the WC seeding.

This is excellent news for U.S. Soccer and the future of this National Team. These are the kind of games we have been pining for to truly test this team during a World Cup cycle. People who are obsessed with results shouldn’t be. I wouldn’t be surprised, nor angry, if the U.S. lost all three of these games. That said, I think we’re capable of upsets as well. Regardless, this means only good things as we head into qualifying. After playing world class teams such as Spain, England and Argentina, hopefully Barbados/Dominica and the rest of the Qualifying opponents (assuming we advance) won’t seem too tough!

This is awesome, I love it. I almost fell off of my desk chair at work this morning. Soccer is a global sport and its great to see us going global in our competition. This is a great chance to show where we are as well as our league. Thanks for the update Ives, the new site rocks.

I am the BEST coach you have ever had by far, and will EVER have, and this is the thanks I get! A bunch of coach wannabes who slander me and simply cannot get over the fact that I couldn’t get the U.S. into the quarterfinals or better again! In case you haven’t noticed this is the United States, not Germany or Brazil.

In a couple of years you’ll all be groveling and saying “Please Bruce, come back, we need you! We’re sorry we were so mean and hateful, and tried to destroy your legacy!” Well, it won’t work! You don’t deserve a genius like me. It was thanks to you guys that I couldn’t coach the Red Bulls the way I wanted. You were always distracting me with your mean and hurtful posts. Well, so long, suckers!

Seems like a group of death type scenario (3 matches in 12 days). I like it. I would also guess that we’ll have our “A” team for the 2 european matches, and a MLS team against Argentina. Time to see what we’re made of.

One at a time…we get these top 20 friendlies in order and soon after we begin lining up a friendly or two in Africa against the likes of Ghana, Ivory Coast, Egypt, and Cameroon. Gotta get used to that environment, and not just during the Confed Cup. The chances we’ll face more than one African team in the world cup are pretty good, esp if we advance out of the group stage.

Nate: I am very, very excited about Jozy’s future (I am a red bull fan) – but I am not ready to sit Rooney for him.

Andrew : Croatia team is not exactly bums. I would be very happy if our mens team could beat Croatia – sure the ‘on any given sunday’ rule applies – but I am not sure we could beat them on a regular basis.

I love my guys, but I just don’t think we have the midfield possession and passing ability (YET) needed to compete with the big boys – and yes, i do still consider Gerrard, Rooney, Terry, Rio, and company big boys.

We have, what, 4 GKs who would start ahead of any English GK? Heck, even Guzan would start ahead of them all – why do you think Villa wanted to bring him in when they have Carson?

In any event, we’ll get killed at Wembley. We might as well send over the NY Giants – at least they have experience winning there, and Manning would be better at setting up the attack than any midfielder we have. But, what the heck – what have we got to lose, other than our dignity? If we play these three games, we likely lose them all, but at least that means no silly arguments that the US should be a top seed for the next World Cup draw (like there was for the last draw).

Emm A.S i was watching England play Switzerland and they were playing pretty awful for most of the game, So I can’t say they would run USA threw the ground.
Also this match would have to be confirmed by the FA if it were to happen, so lets not all get our hopes up.

England is hard to beat but they also have a hard time beating anyone. Of course, we’l still have to see what Capello makes of them. Does anyone remember that the US just beat Switzerland 1-0 (Bradley) in Basle in October of 2007? England just barely beat them 2-1 at home, while hardly a reliable indicator, based on that the US will hardly be out of its depth. By May the MLS players will be in playing shape, unlike the Mexico match. It doesn’t matter if we don’t have anyone who could play for England, Greece won Euro 2004 with a lineup of unknowns. The biggest challenge will be making it an entertaining match. As viscerally anti-American as the English footballing crowd are, the pre-game hype should be very entertaining for its venom.

I never said croatia had a rag tag team. I think croatia is a nation to be reckoned with. But i think we are too. We beat switzerland 1-0 and they played the same team and only beat them 2-1 at wembley. Checked the rosters and theres only like 1 or 2 different people and we were missing donovan and EJ so it was no different. And we beat them at switzerland. I mean im not saying rooney, rio, owen, hargreaves, and crew aren’t world class, I’m just saying we have a shot at beating them, a way better shot than we’ve ever had. Especially if we bring the full squad (cept beasley). I’m not saying we are favorites, I know we are underdogs, but we got a shot.

I was also in Chicago for the last US v England game. The crowd was more entertaining than the game, well the England fans anyway. As the flypast came over the stadium the boys launched into
the Dammbusters theme with their arms out like WW2 bombers….Hillarious….then we had all the “Are you Scotland in disguise” The American fans looked on bemused….

The funniest part of the weekend was at the pre game drink at a pub on the main road not far from the Stadium. It was full of England fans from the North of England, a little basic to say the least. On the same weekend in Chicago there was also a leather wearing Gay convention…..picture the scene….Big dave from Rotheram worse the wear from many pints of Snakebite, meets 2 Puffs walking past the Pub in leather chaps and braces…..It was one of the funniest things I have ever seen….”Cum ere ya F***ing benders” say’s the drunken Big Dave, our leather clad friends declined the offer and quickend their walk…..everyone just fell about laughing….These are 2 groups of people that should never meet….So, we will be at Wembley for this one….cant wait….

lets hope the games actually happen and that we don’t end up with morocco, venezuela, and latvia 😛
otherwise, sounds great! agree with many of the posts…good practice for our young guys not to get star struck in the world cup, as well as a good test etc…just all around great!!! 🙂

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